Online Journalism Blog has an article on Augmented Reality (which I pointed out would be over-hyped in 2010) that’s worth reading to cover in part to see how misconceptions about what it is and how the next big thing in social digital communications is being portrayed. Also, if journalists are looking for a use for it, PRs and other communicators need to be able to deal with it (and we’ll come back to that point at the end).

Anyway, Karthika Muthukumaraswamy starts by talking initiatives magazines have done. Now while they may be improving shiny editions, they aren’t AR in any sense, it’s just a modified picture/sales gimmick. And this is going to be one of the dangers of AR – if it has such a loose definition, anything can get tagged with it. It’s like pointing out papers are already 3D multimedia devices. They are in 3 dimensions and have text and pictures, ergo multimedia.

Karthika goes as far as to say

None of them specifically utilized the potential of augmented reality to enhance delivery of serious content,

Perhaps that’s because they aren’t really augmented reality?

Anyway, moving on there’s a nice idea or two about using AR at live events – and there’s potential there, I’ll give her that, with the idea that you are told how far a pass went in a sports game, the wind strength, speed of a serve in tennis and so on. And that’s a nice idea apart from one problem. In current generation tech, you would be seeing this through your phone and as such, holding your phone up to whatever piece of reality you want augmented.

In doing so, you’re placing a barrier between you and the reality. You’re no longer engaging with your surroundings. To all intents you are engaging with your phone, not the reality. This might get easier when we have super-glasses like Spider Jerusalem or Accelerando-style inputs, but for this generation of tech, it’s a barrier (a bit like some social media sites can be when people decide to stay in to be on Facebook instead of going out and being, you know, social).

Karthika then goes on to talk about mixed media and how holding a paper up to a webcam will then produce an up to date story. Again, I don’t see where the AR comes into that and besides the idea of scanning a paper to get an updated version was tried and dumped years ago with barcodes, web codes and various other efforts. Why bother going to that bother when a quick type on Google News gets you the update? It also makes the assumption that newspapers will be around.

Karthika then chats about localising content and she’s on the money here – though this is where AR is shown to be dependant on GPS (It’s too early in the morning for all these acronyms) – but the good idea falls down in the real world of practicality shown when she says:

It would be nice to see publications invest in providing local, breaking news through applications downloaded on smartphones, for instance. This would also allow national publications to “localize” themselves.

And here’s the problem. Journalists are already being sacked in droves. Most who remain are up to their eyes in work, digital news teams are swamped too. Who’s providing the extra material then?

If I’m being overly critical I don’t actually mean to be. It’s a well-intentioned article, but it’s taken a buzzword, thrown together a bunch of scenarios and not thought through the consequences. For example:

Augmented reality could add a new dimension, quite literally, to this format of content delivery, without a reader having to navigate hyperlinks or popup windows.

But they will have to navigate and click because for a start the AR content is going to be an overly on reality itself – regardless of looking at it through glasses or a phone – and also because if there is a lot of relevant links to a spot (like restaurant reviews or use of UGC as K mentions in the article) then there’s going to be chunks to choose from.

The killer blow to the article comes at the end though:

With the growing number of paid smart phone apps, news organizations are beginning to understand that the audience is more likely to pay for technology than for content.

Hmm, so that whole ‘content is king and the emperor’ line we hear is piffle then? This one part underlies the problem with the whole article. The author seems quite taken with shiny new tech and not actually looking at the implications for either journalism or others. It’s about the new! the shiny!

I do also like how it takes to the end of the article for the reality check of “this tech might be a wee bit away…”.

Also, if AR does take off – by providing information about (as Karthika says) Niagra Falls (”made of water. wet. don’t fall over the side. Click here to see the last 3 YouTube videos of people falling”) then a lot of that won’t come from journalists, it’ll come from PRs, ditto for restaurants and so on who will – if they are providing the wifi for your connection – also try and control what you see on your AR when it comes up.

The more worrying implication is that the way for people to make money from this would be to bombard you with ads for where you are at any one time – ads dressed as content perhaps, but still ads – and that might be where newspapers try to make money. For example, you are standing outside of NEXT and your phone/goggles tell you that the local paper did an article on NEXT’s new range. Click through to the article to not only see what it says but also your face put on top some of the clothing range. Newspaper gets money from NEXT for hooking you in and also perhaps a percentage of your sale.

As an article on journalism and AR, it’s a bit of a well-intentioned fail, but for a newbie look at AR and what it could be used for it’s worth a read.

Putting a tech head on, the odds are we’re going down this way but it’s more than a few years off (and, as always add an extra year or two for it to get to Scotland) before it’s user ubiquitous.

Though I do chuckle at the ultimate end of all of this when I point my phone/glasses/digital contact lenses at a neighbour’s house and get all their public updates streamed to me. That could be a hoot if you have a moody teen in the house (”mum and dad fighting, little brother won’t give me a boyf a moment’s peace” and then you read the mum/dad/cat blogs, tweet updates and so on) – AR will make curtain twitchers of us all!

(thansks to Paul Bradshaw and Paul Armstrong for the link)